Photographer Henry Stuart's Camera Encounters Komodo Dragon

The Nikon Blog has posted an interview with immersive photographer Henry Stuart. The article is interesting enough, but the excerpt below made me laugh out loud:

And what’s the most unusual job you’ve ever done?

The weirdest must be taking the 360° image of Raja, a Komodo dragon at London Zoo. I wasn’t allowed to enter the enclosure – these are big, dangerous predators – so I had to teach the head keeper how to use my D800. He went in there armed with a stick, and bottle of fish juice and blood which he scattered around to tempt Raja out into the open.

Just as we’d finally gotten the shot, Raja started to take a huge interest in the camera and tried to run off with it. The keeper managed to rescue it by hooking the strap on the end of his stick, and then Raja started to chase him round the pond. So there was this poor guy, fish-juice bottle in one hand, D800 dangling from the stick in the other, with the Komodo dragon in hot pursuit… When he finally got out and I got my camera back, the smell from where it had been licked was disgusting. I wasn’t allowed to leave the zoo until the strap had been boil-washed and my D800 had been completely swabbed down and disinfected. I could still smell that saliva on it two months later!